Mother Joanne Brasse and Sarah Brasse, who died of untreated appendicitis.

Photo By Courtesy photo

Mother Joanne Brasse and Sarah Brasse, who died of untreated appendicitis.

Photo By Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News

Jo-Anne Guerrero and her children, from left, twins Joseph and Jacob Guerrero, 3, Neil Brasse, 14, Noah Brasse, 10, and Wendy-Rae Guerrero, 4, stand with a collage of photographs of Guerrero's daughter and their sister, Sarah Brasse, who died of acute appendicitis while in the care of Guerrero's ex-husband and his wife in 2009, at their home in San Antonio on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013.

Photo By Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News

A collage of photographs of Sarah Brasse hangs in the living room as her mother, Jo-Anne Guerrero, prepares dinner at her home for her husband and other five children in San Antonio on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. Brasse died of acute appendicitis in 2009 in the care of Brasse's father and his wife.

Photo By Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News

"That's my sister. I miss her," Wendy-Rae Guerrero, 4, says as she points at a collage of photographs of her half-sister, Sarah Brasse, on the wall of the living room in her home in San Antonio on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. Brasse died of acute appendicitis in 2009 while in the care of Brasse's father and his wife.

Photo By Courtesy photo

Wendy-Rae Guerrero, Sarah Brasse's half-sister, kisses her siblings' headstone. The photo was taken a year after Sarah's death when Guerrero was two years old.

Photo By Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News

Jo-Anne Guerrero kisses her son, Jacob Guerrero, 3, as she dries him off after his bath while his twin, Joseph, plays in the water as they get ready for bedtime at their home in San Antonio on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. She found out she was pregnant with the twins the day her daughter, Sarah Brasse, died while in the custody of her ex-husband and his wife in 2009.

Photo By Thomas B. Shea/San Antonio Express-News

David Brasse holds a family portrait on his porch at his house in Alvin, Texas. David Brasse and then-fiancee Samantha Britain were convicted in the 2009 death of their daughter Sarah, who died of untreated appendicitis. Their convictions were overturned and the state has dropped its pursuit of Brasse but has asked the court of criminal appeals to apply a lesser charge to Britiain. CPS investigated the couple repeatedly before Sarah
died.

Photo By Guadalupe County

Samantha Britain, convicted of injury to a child in the death of her stepdaughter, Sarah Brasse, 8. The conviction was later overturned.

Photo By Guadalupe County

David Brasse, who was convicted of injury to a child in the death of his daughter Sarah Brasse, 8. The conviction was later overturned.

In the 48 hours before 8-year-old Sarah Brasse died of acute appendicitis alone in her soiled bed, a school counselor, a school nurse and a Schertz police officer alerted Child Protective Services about their fears that she was being neglected.

Yet CPS declined to open a new investigation or even send a caseworker to check on the ailing Sarah, despite the fact the agency's staffers repeatedly had recorded her father's failure to seek adequate medical care for his children.

For most of the previous two years, people concerned about Sarah and her siblings had called CPS a dozen times. The agency opened and closed as many as six different investigations of the couple, according records obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

But no one from CPS had visited the home or seen Sarah in at least six weeks and perhaps as long as nine weeks, records show.

If only she'd been taken to a doctor, she probably would have lived, a medical examiner later would testify in court.

CPS officials declined to comment and wouldn't allow employees involved in the case to be interviewed.

Her father and his fiancée were later acquitted by an appeals court.

The trial jury never heard the history of CPS' investigations and whatever culpability the agency holds in Sarah's death never has been examined publicly — until now.